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| The Taiwan Supreme Court in Taipei, Taiwan. Takatoshi Kurikawa/Alamy |
TAIPEI, Taiwan — It is an age-old arrangement, and one that is usually implicit: Parents pay for their children’s educations, and hope that in their old age the children will support them.
But in a case that made its way to Taiwan’s highest court, a mother who had financed her son’s dental training sued him, claiming that he had broken a written agreement to support her from the proceeds of his dental practice.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court sided with his mother.
The case attracted considerable attention because the mother and son had put down in a written contract — signed when he was 20 — what is often left unsaid. The principle is backed up by law in Taiwan, where adults are legally prohibited from abandoning their parents.
Each side advanced arguments: The mother urged the court to enforce the contract. The son maintained that he had already paid his mother $1 million and should not have to pay her more.
According to news outlets in Taiwan, the woman, identified only by her surname, Luo, raised her two sons after she and their father divorced, putting both through dental school.
Ms. Luo told the Supreme Court that when she worked as a single mother to put her sons through dental school, she was concerned that they might not help support her in old age, so she had each sign an agreement when they turned 20. Her sons both became practicing dentists in 2003.
The agreement stipulated that after becoming dentists, her sons would pay her 60 percent of their net profits until the total amount paid reached $1.7 million.
The younger son told the court that he repaid her more than $1 million. Given that he signed the contract when he was only 20 and that he had already paid back so much of his contractual debt to his mother — he argued that his debt should be cleared.
The court disagreed, however, ruling on Tuesday that because he signed the agreement as a legal adult, he was responsible for satisfying its terms.
The court ordered Dr. Chu to pay an “upbringing fee” of more than $754,000, with additional interest bringing the total award for his mother to more than $967,000.
The verdict drew mixed reactions.
